


your étude

by geometrician



Series: dualshock desertbloom [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Camping, Earth C (Homestuck), Gen, Not Epilogue Compliant, Past Child Abuse, Reconciliation, S'mores
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:15:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21999592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geometrician/pseuds/geometrician
Summary: Dave goes camping.[a look at an unofficial "candy" ending.]
Relationships: Dave's Bro | Beta Dirk Strider & Dave Strider
Series: dualshock desertbloom [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1583647
Comments: 18
Kudos: 108





	your étude

**Author's Note:**

> this is, of course, an unofficial sequel to dualshock, an extension of the bonus "candy" ending I tacked on in the endnotes ([link here](https://paionia.dreamwidth.org/333.html), hosted on dreamwidth). you could probably read it as a stand-alone, though some details may not make sense, and it spoils the initial framing of dualshock. I kept thinking about this scenario until I had to write it down, so here's a long-ish thing to celebrate the incoming decade.
> 
> content warnings for: open and detailed (non-graphic) discussion of canon-typical child abuse, conflict between former abuser and victim, trauma and memory problems, negative self-talk, and assorted baggage of the dave kind.

It’s fine, you think, that this is happening.

You’re about to lose your fucking marbles like a toddler getting swindled by an Olympian gold medalist in marble-shootin’, but this is fine. Everything is A-okay and you make very good decisions consistently because you are a rational. Mother. Fuckin’. Thinker.

Oh who are you kidding. You’re a moron. This was a terrible idea. You’re getting bitten by bugs, for god’s sake. You’re a city boy, born and raised, and the only bugs you know how to deal with are roaches and spiders, and the methods you use to deal with them are 1) sentencing them to death by vacuum or 2) waiting anxiously in another room until they leave.

Which is how you deal with most of the problems in your life, really.

You’re not really a proactive kind of guy.

You guess you never had to be, though. What with the whole predestination thing, or paradox space, or whatever. You just kind of went with the flow, made up your own flow sometimes, laid down a sick beat or two, ran your mouth until the whole thing was over. The only thing you really, actually did was… y’know. Pin the head back on the Dirk. And also some other things.

God dammit. You wish you’d listened to Karkat. _You don’t have to do this, Dave. Are you sure you want to do this, Dave? Dave, do you think you’re even ready, like, mentally? Dave, what the fuck are you doing?_ Well, Karkat, what you thought you were doing was a little weekend funtime with the baddest bitch around. And you do mean baddest. Like, the worst. And not just because you have history. Almost four years out of the house has taught you a little somethin’-somethin’, or unlearned you a little this-and-that, and as you’ve been watching him over the past couple of months, you’ve learned that he’s pretty forthrightly an asshole.

Look, you knew that, but it’s different that he was an asshole to you specifically in the past tense, versus him being an asshole just as a person. And you hate to say it, you really do, but damn, the layers of characterization you’ve been slowly unearthing are not particularly inspiring.

Like, okay, you didn’t expect him to suddenly be Dirk, once he was sans Lil Cal. Honestly, truly, you didn’t. People don’t change like that overnight, no matter what kind of evil influence they shrug off. Grimbark Jade was still Jade, Crockertier Jane was still Jane, and you’re sure whatever shenanigans the trolls played on each other in their session didn’t change who they fundamentally were. The only thing is, you don’t know who your bro was, fundamentally. You know it was Dirk, at some point, because of their shared point of origin (fucking, thanks, John, jesus christ). But maybe you didn’t expect him to be mostly the same.

Maybe you need to rephrase that. He’s not mostly the same. He’s not setting up booby traps, he’s not filming weird puppet guro for the big internet bucks, and Caliborn’s weird _Saw_ fetish has vanished without a trace. Which should change, like, 95% of his personality, one would fucking think, but he’s, y’know. The same. It’s like you just cleared off the junk on a table and are super surprised that it’s still a shitty goddamn table with four legs and a flat top, and you still have to do your homework on it, oops.

Speaking of which, Dad Crocker, bless him, has kludged a homeschooling curriculum together, and you have to do homework now. To enrich your brain, or whatever. You could not be less interested if you tried, and you’re pretty sure he would have given up if there wasn’t another nominal adult in the house to at least present the idea of discipline, even if your bro literally doesn’t interact with anyone at all, maybe except for Dirk.

Because you are a nosy little freak and you lost the ability to maintain a normal sleep schedule years ago, you’ve heard him talking to Jane’s dad late at night, in voices so low that you can barely pick up on any of it. Just a word, here and there. Enough to know they’re talking about all of you, like they’re co-parenting instead of Crockerdad doing all the work and your bro just… existing as he is.

He’s not who you expected him to be, which was somebody else. He’s not the guy you hoped for when Dirk pretty much laid out how he was throwing himself on your mercy and trying to be a better dude. He’s not the guy you wished he would be in secret moments when you were growing up. He still barely talks to anyone except Pop Crocks, and when he does, it’s just kind of – not combative, but like there’s an underlying question. _Why are you wasting my time with this?_ Like he doesn’t actually fucking want to be here.

Which, jesus christ, you cannot understand why he’d wait for your fucking permission to return to reality instead of insisting on staying in his little bubbleverse if _this_ is what he’s going to do, skulk around and do nothing except make everyone kinda uncomfortable.

But here’s the kicker, okay:

He’s an asshole, but he, like, talks to you sometimes?

Which sounds like you’re the neediest person alive, which, maybe you are, because – actually, nope, Tavros exists, so park that particular car back where you found it, felon. You’re not the neediest person alive, but when he talks to you, and listens to what you have to say, even though it looks like he wants to crawl out of his skin the entire time, you feel like this is something approaching what you wanted.

Still a dick.

But you’ve gotten used to him, and he’s not really scary anymore in the classical sense, since no one ever leaves you alone with him (not that there’s an incredible amount of space in the house, either). He doesn’t seem to mind being put under supervised parole, and in turn, his threat level has gone down to like a Defcon-3 from a 1.

It’s been a couple of months. He’s different, and he’s the same, and you watch him sometimes, talking with Dirk or Father Crocker, the way he moves sometimes with lethal efficiency, and other times like he’s wading through concrete. He’s not the impulsive wacko you lived with, but he still has edges, and if you cut yourself on them, well, [whiny voice here,] it’s your fault, isn’t it?

He’s only had a big blowout fight with Dirk once since he got back, and you weren’t privy to about 95% of it, just the tail end. And you realized you haven’t ever heard him dig into anyone else before.

It just passed over you, like a storm, and he hasn’t raised his voice at you at all. That should be more important to you than it is, you think.

Anyway. You swat a cloud of gnats out of your face. It’s been months, and he’s been decent, if not really a brother or a dad or anything, especially compared to those batshit thirteen years of fuckery, and hey, you’re nothing if not a total fucking sucker, so when he asked you if you wanted to go camping, like a real boy, you kind of just stuttered and said _sure._

And now here you are, trotting behind him through the ass-end of the woods in the middle of fucking nowhere, trying not to trip over random rocks and roots. He moves with supreme smoothness, even carrying twice the amount of shit you are, since he has the tent and everything. When you’re not almost smashing your face into the dirt, your eyes are laser-scoped onto the back of his head. He ain’t talkin’, so you guess you’re just going to have to dig in and do some mad deciphering this weekend like a feral Alan Turing.

Then you think, _well, fuck that noise, I’m a god,_ and take a drink of water from your bottle to make sure your throat doesn’t do anything embarrassing, and confidently whine, “Are we there yet?”

He actually looks back at you, just a quick flick of the head, then returns his gaze to the forest ahead of you. “Yeah. Scoped this place out last week. Probably another twenty minutes, if we make decent time.”

“When the fuck did you have time to scope this out?”

“I can move pretty damn fast when I want to.”

“You could just do your stupid flash step shit to get us to the campsite,” you grouse. “Beam me the fuck up, Scotty.”

“I could.”

“So why don’t you?” You know you’re pressing literally every single button available to you, but hey, who the fuck cares anymore. You’re not in Houston. He’s not your weird, inaccessible pseudo-father-figure anymore, so you’re going to access him whenever and however you damn well please.

You see him sigh more than hear it. It’s all in the shoulders. You’re really fucking good at reading him, it turns out. “Can’t take a fuckin’ gander at nature when you’re steppin’ that fast.”

“Okay.” You kick a rock, like a sullen teenager in a movie. Perfect. That’s one of your best vibes, and you luxuriate in the sulk. “Didn’t know you were such a big nature guy.”

He’s struggling not to bite your head off, you can tell. And you don’t really mind, because you’re being a little piece of shit on purpose. You would have bitten your own head off a full hour before now. This is hardcore challenge mode. You’re making him play DOOM, Dave edition, on nightmare difficulty. Or maybe that’s a tasteless joke, because he’s already played the Doomed Dave edition of the game. “Not that much nature in Houston.”

“Yeah. I’m surprised you didn’t drop me in the middle of the fucking desert for survival training.” And, well, you haven’t really talked about the bullshit gladiatorial upbringing he shat all over you, so you bite your lip immediately and wish you hadn’t wasted your big shot so early. Oopsie fucking daisies. You were supposed to save your trauma for a nice campfireside talk, sobbing onto your s’mores or something. You don’t even know if he has stuff for s’mores. That was the entire point of the trip. You will pitch a fit if you don’t get to eat at least one of those delicious motherfuckers.

“Straight immersion don’t do much at that age,” is what he says, and you don’t know how to interpret that. Okay, yes, you do, but you pretend you don’t, playing dumb like he obviously thinks you are, and pry.

“How would you know? Were you in the Scouts or somethin’?”

He just shrugs. “What if I was. Would that be so hard to believe?”

“Uh, yeah, dude,” you deadpan. “Don’t think they would have approved of you being attached to a freaky clown rapper doll at the hip.”

“Guess not.”

God, you are sweating like a horselord. Disgusting. Physical exertion is hella not your thing. It’s just like him to pick a supposed bonding activity that makes you want to freeze yourself in a block of ice in the middle of the ocean and take a long-ass nap with your pet cartoon bison.

He’s not wrong about nature, though. Again, as a born-and-raised city boy, you never had much of an opportunity to go on long walks through the woods, or anything, and your planets were all… kind of fucky. Like, you spent some time chilling on John’s planet, sure, but those were weird Game trees, and you were surrounded by lizards with a collective IQ of .05 the entire time, so, like, you don’t think that counts. When you’re not staring at your bro’s back or narrowly avoiding a faceplant, you kind of feel like you’re on the verge of sensory overload. Bird calls, insect calls, your own fucking body screaming like a dissolving Wicked Witch, the wind in the leaves, mushrooms of all configurations, weird-ass bugs, moss, lichen, big rocks – plenty to see and not bother your bro about.

You think you’d like this a lot more if you liked him a lot more. Or if you were out here with Dirk, who can crack a fucking joke and has, like, _a_ social presence.

The campsite is in a little clearing where he’s already pulled up two logs around a circle of stones. He drops his bags, and you do the same, cracking your back and stretching your shoulders. You are exhausted, and it’s only about noontime. You still have a lengthy afternoon hike to do, and then you have to spend the night with this dickhead before hiking back tomorrow morning. Oh god.

Well, you could always yank the emergency release. Every god-tier can fly, everyone knows the exact coordinates of your campsite, and your phone has universal reception. _You_ can fly. You could book it home in half an hour, if you stepped on the gas. Hell, Roxy could probably pop you out in a nanosecond. But you just… well, you don’t want to.

Things aren’t amazing, but you’re in the woods with your bro and he hasn’t been a total dick. That also doesn’t mean you’re into the whole hiking thing, though. You have half a mind to just curl up in a sleeping bag and take a sickass nap right this instant, but that probably wouldn’t go over well.

Not that you necessarily care, anymore, about what will and won’t go over well, although you realize glumly that even old man Crocker could probably talk you into a brisk walk up a tall mountain, and it’s probably because of what Rose has kindly nicknamed your “father conundrum,” which sounds hells of better than “daddy issues,” even if you both know that’s what she actually means.

He’s taking things out of the tent bag, ingredients which you presume will constitute a tent in the near future. When you don’t immediately come over, he glances up and beckons you over with a quick tilt of the head. You take your sweet, sweet time strolling over, but he doesn’t seem to register your loud impertinence, just starts explaining which poles go into which parts of the tent, and you so want to make a joke about how this is the closest he’s ever come to giving you The Talk, but also you don’t really feel like making him laugh at all. You just nod and slide the flexible poles through the green waterproof cloth until you have a standing structure, and then you hang around with your hands on your hips until he’s done hammering the pegs into the soft ground.

“A’ight, time for yours,” he says, and starts reaching for his dex when you blurt out,

“We’re not sleeping in the same tent?”

He gives you a look. It’s different than the look you expected. He just seems kind of startled, eyebrows up and eyes a little wider, which is not an expression you’ve ever seen on his face. In fact, you’ve been seeing a lot of expressions from him. He used to not do the whole facial muscles thing. And he hasn’t been wearing his shades too much, so you’re really getting a whole eyeful.

“Figured you’d want your own,” he says slowly, clearly trying to phrase this in a way that won’t upset you. “Guess you don’t gotta use it, if you don’t wanna. But we should set it up, anyhow.”

Well,

that’s,

nice of him, you guess.

Weird.

“Okay,” you reply, shrugging. “We can put our stuff in one of ’em for now.”

He grunts an affirmative, and you get the second tent set up pretty much on your own. It’s slightly smaller, and a darker green. Hmm, whose fucking tents did he borrow? What a mystery. You’re all so goddamn predictable.

You park your ass on a log to cool down. He respects that, or at least doesn’t give a shit, pulling random stuff out of his dex and the borrowed bags. A camping stove, a basket cooler, a gallon of water, his sleeping bag, a change of clothes, a big tarp that you think is probably a rain slick, and other shit you don’t keep track of that’s also probably vital to surviving in the woods. Bear Grylls shit. He’s fine doing the work by himself, doesn’t once snap the whip at your feet to get them moving.

It’s so fucking weird. Like, objectively a good thing, you think, but weird.

You’re stuck in the middle of the woods, miles from anyone else, with a guy you have every right to hate. And that’s the problem, right? You hate him and you wouldn’t care if he died, but you really don’t want him to, and you care about him. You care so fucking much, and if anything happened to him again, you’d lose your goddamn shit-idiot mind. You want him to hurt for what he did, but you also just want him to chill the fuck out and be fucking _normal_ so you can rag on Hallmark movies and be cool.

Fuck.

You take a deep breath and try not to melt the fuck down in the middle of the woods. It smells like dirt and wet green stuff. The air is thick with humidity, but it’s cleansing, somehow. Feels good. You do half of one of Kanaya’s breathing exercises and get to your feet, only a little unsteady. Right on cue, your bro emerges from the tent and stretches out his back, one arm behind his head.

He looks old. Makes you feel sad, for some reason. Not old-old, just… more than his age. Which, you think, you don’t actually know.

It’s a whole new world, so you ask. “How old are you, dude?”

He side-eyes you. “Why?” And there it is. You feel stupid for asking.

“Dunno. Feel like you gotta be pretty advanced in years to have your back that fucked up already.”

“You’re the time god, you tell me.”

“Can you just,” you start to snap, but then your instincts kick in and you freeze.

Time stops, but only metaphorically. He has one eye on you, left hand paused in its stretch toward the sky, and you are acutely aware of the fact that he’s still predator-lean after all these years, still moves like a big cat who’s spotted prey.

But he tends to surprise you, these days, so he shrugs and drops his arms, shoves his hands in his pockets. “Feel like it’s just what happens when you hit thirty.”

“You’re—” You do some quick fucking math. “You were seventeen? When I came down?”

“Nineteen,” he corrects.

Which makes him thirty-three, now. “When’s your birthday?”

“Wasn’t born, was I?”

“Okay, then your dumbshit Liv-Tyler-less _Armageddon_ meteor impact day _,_ bro. C’mon,” you whine.

He gives you a long look, and you get irrationally nervous again, kicking your heels against the dirt.

“I’ll tell you,” he says, “but let’s get goin’, first.” And he nods toward what you think is probably the trail.

The path you take is supposedly towards a series of waterfalls. You’re not sure what that’s supposed to mean, if anything. Your bro has always been a melodramatic son of a bitch in his own robotic Keanu Reeves way, but you’d never have put him down as the kind of guy who would appreciate the drama of a waterfall. Maybe Dirk would, if he were more of a Boy Scout type and less of a Young Frankenstein type. He loves the indoors too much.

Not that you’re any fucking better! The anticipation of lying down on the cold goddamn ground and going to sleep there _on purpose_ because _you planned to do it_ is absolutely batshit to you and it’s a wonder you survived two months out here without dying. There are infinite rocks and bugs and snakes and small rodents that could give you old man back in the span of thirty seconds. Anything you want to experience in nature can be found in Minecraft, and that’s the way you like it. No risk of bodily harm or stress. You never actually wanted to be Bear Grylls, you just wanted to be inde-fucking-structable and also have the feral clout of a dude who would actually drink his own piss instead of being afraid of apple juice.

Like, that’s not a prank he ever pulled, but your bro really twisted a lot of shit around for you, huh?

Your brain never really stops, but it does settle into a mindless chatter as you start to get bored of being on edge, and you start to really get a look at the world around you.

While Dirk was gone, you were going absolutely balls-to-the-walls crazy, and you did your share of surveying and mapping. But you were constantly using your flying powers and glamping like a god thanks to Jade and Roxy whippin’ y’all up some portable glamping gear. It was like being at home, except the only other person there was John. Karkat was practically there, too, if only by virtue of the two of you constantly texting each other like teenagers in a Disney Channel movie.

Speaking of which, apparently he has nothing to say about that.

Like, he’d better not, since he and Dirk presumably have the same… orientation, but you can’t lie and say you never thought about what he’d think, wonder if you three could have gotten along. Maybe that was a little too ambitious.

Anyway. Maybe it’s because you were green-starved in the middle of Houston, but it is lush as fuck out here, and it always surprises you how much you love trees. The texture of the leaves, how alive they look, the way you can tell that each one is a living, breathing thing, paradoxically decades or even centuries old even though this world really only appeared two years ago. You’re a tree hugger now, and not just in the _heh heh Snoop Doggy Dogg meams smok teh wh3ed_ way. You actually fucking love these overgrown green motherfuckers.

The trail your bro picked out leads you gently upward through a couple of groves of trees, and you shuffle through the leaf litter with ease. Eventually you come to a steep incline, and you turn inward, climbing over large stones. He vaults up a tough scramble like a big shitty monkey, and you roll your eyes as you begin to climb up by yourself, but you find with some surprise that he reappears over the ridge with a long arm extended down to you. You have to climb up a couple of feet to meet him, but you do grab his hand, because even if he lets go, you can fucking fly.

You half expect him to, to teach you a lesson or something, but he doesn’t, just pulls you up with a curled arm and a braced foot and continues on his merry way.

Eventually, you come to the bank of a creek. It’s clear and full of multicolored stones, and without thinking, you whoop and dash forward, yanking your shoes off and wading in. You and John cannot fucking resist a little fuckin’ dip in the water. You think it might have something to do with the fact that his planet was covered in oil, and yours was covered in lava, and then you were stuck hurtling through space for three years before floating through another dimension for however the fuck long. Not much water contact since you were a kid and got signed up for classes at the local Y.

It doesn’t register to you until you are calf deep in the water that your bro probably didn’t mean for this expedition to end this early, and you whirl around, heart suddenly in your throat, almost ready to apologize, as if that has ever done anything for you with him.

But he doesn’t look angry. He’s just standing there, scratching a bug bite, and you notice he’s put your shoes and socks together.

You used to have fun at the pool. You remember vaguely the water closing over your head as he dove under, the rush of excitement when he burst out of the water again with you secure in his arms, your uncontrollable laughter, like you were at Six Flags and not the rinky-dink community center. Sometimes you think you might have dreamed it up.

“Get in,” you yell at him, splashing water in his direction. “The water’s warm.” It’s definitely not.

“Don’t slip,” he warns you, as if you needed the warning. When you see him take off his shoes and feel his way down the bank, you feel a weird kind of thrill that shoots straight up into your throat and forms a lump that you have to swallow down.

Your formidable brother wades into the water, only unstable for a fraction of a moment, and sticks around ankle-height until you splash at him again. It doesn’t reach him, but you can sense that he has noticed your provocation. He kicks it up, sends spray splattering down in front of you, a couple of droplets hitting your shades.

“Watch the goods, dude,” you yelp, wiping them down. He doesn’t say anything, just moves forward and splashes you again while you’re vulnerable, drenching your shorts and the bottom half of your shirt. “Bro! Dude!”

“What, can’t handle a li’l wet?” He flicks his fingers at you, and you have to wipe more water off of your shades before you tuck them safely on top of your head. But no more splashes are forthcoming, and you kind of just put your hands on your hips and squint around you, surveying your dominion.

The silence isn’t awkward. It’s a little tense, but you know he’s not on track to beat your ass (yet), so you feel it’s more like he has something to say. Maybe he’ll finally tell you when his fuckin’ birthday is.

Is it wrong to feel a little guilty that you don’t know when it is? He always got you tons of stuff for your birthday, packages outside your door at eight in the morning every year since you can remember. It didn’t really register that he himself was the kind of guy who had something as stupid and kiddieshit as a birthday. Like he was outside the grasp of time itself.

It’s not like you owe it to him to know what day it is, but hell, you don’t owe this dude _anything,_ and you’re still tagging along with him on hiking trips, trying to get senpai to fucking notice you, find out if he actually sees you when he looks at you. If he’s still him, or if he’s been someone else this whole time.

“It’s December third,” he says, bending down to pick a stone out from the water. He sends it skipping, and your brain skips too, like a record.

“That’s Dirk’s birthday,” you reply automatically, stating the obvious. God, you’re such a moron. “That’s _my_ birthday.”

He shrugs, starts looking for another stone. “Yeah.”

“You never said anything.”

He shrugs again, searching intently for a good skipping rock like this is some a slice of pastoral Norman Rockwell fuckin’ American wholesomeness instead of deadass just Minecraft with super fly shaders. “Not a birthday kinda guy.”

“Aw, bullshit. Why’d you make such a big deal out of mine, then?”

The stone skims across the surface of the water, tap-tap-tap-tap-tap, before it slips beneath the surface. Your bro’s arms are wet, and you’re pretty sure there’s some science behind the fact that you can see his scars better that way, when they shine silver. You didn’t wonder too much about that, as a kid. Always assumed he had some, like he hopped out the womb looking like a badass. But now you know there was no womb, and he didn’t hop out that way, because Dirk looks different, and genes don’t encode scars. Hairstyles, yes, evidence of injury, no.

“You liked it, didn’t ya?”

“Sure. That was maybe the only thing.” Well, you didn’t mean to say that, but now you are tripping all over these cats that just swarmed out of your stupid bag mouth. Holy shit. This is the conversational equivalent of an outraged RREEAAAOOOW. “I mean—”

“’S a’right,” he says. Doesn’t pick up another rock. Where’d he learn to skip? Ain’t no skippin’ water like this in Houston. “You can say what you want. I ain’t gonna get mad.”

“Yeah, but maybe I don’t want to just say whatever the fuck pops into my head.” _I’m not a fucking asshole like you are,_ is what you want to say, but never in a million years will you have a big enough dick to say that straight up. “I just… it was always birthdays, and when I got sick. What kinda kid has fun being sick?”

You pick up a rock and half-heartedly sling it into the water, where it splashes once and sinks back onto the creek bed.

You thought it would be different. Not that he’d be different, you’ve been over that, but maybe _you_ would be different. Better. Stronger. Less afraid of him. But you’re falling back into old habits in the blink of an eye. It was easier to put up a face with the others around, because you could pretend he isn’t a part of you. And you know, with a kind of bone-crunching discomfort, that he always will be. He’s the way you jump, the way you shut down, the silence you have to fill with words, the absence that leaves you reaching out for other people, your constant need for validation. You think he probably meant to make you strong, but now you’re a black hole for affection, self-absorbed in the worst ways.

And yet you don’t actually hate him as much as you thought you did. Maybe it’s just the proximity. You want to feel as angry as you did back then. You want to be hell-raising mad on behalf of your kid self. And sure, you are, a little bit, but mostly you are just so fucking sad. For you, because you never thought you’d get here, and also for him, because, well, look at him. What the fuck kind of life did he live to get ready for you at nineteen? If a baby came down on your next birthday, you’re pretty sure you’d immediately drop him on his head and boom, dead baby. You can’t imagine Dirk, who had to be educated on not eating moldy bread, would have been much better.

“I liked it, too,” he says softly, and isn’t it just so fucked how that isn’t fucked up for you two? Like, you get it. You instantly know what he means. But it’s a weird comfort to hear him explain it, anyway. “Weren’t any choice but to take a break when you were sick. And the number one thing about kids is that they’re supposed to have cool birthdays.”

“Where’d you learn that, Disney Channel?” You’re just being mean now, jabbing your finger into his buttons like he’s a lagging elevator and you’re a businessman who’s being forced to teleconference up to his tenth floor office from the lobby.

He gives you a strange look. “Maybe.”

“Christ.” Your calves are going numb. You scoop up some of the water and splash your face with it. Maybe this is all just a bad dream. Please let this just be a bad dream. “Did they even have Disney Channel when you were growing up?”

“Tail end of it, yeah. But I was mostly about MTV. I was hopin’ to get you on _Super Sweet 16_ for the cash.”

“Bullshit you were. We should’ve been living in River Oaks if that was your gambit.”

“Yeah. N’you would’ve thrown the weirdest fuckin’ tantrum on the show.”

“And they’d have to spend a million bucks to censor all your weirdo dick puppets.”

He does that thing where he exhales and that’s laughing. “Guess so.”

Sometimes you forget there used to be a history to the world. Generations of people, like a billion, going back to the era of single-celled algae stewing in a caldera in the middle of Shitty Hot Earth. Generationally-speaking, your bro ain’t that old. Maybe it was just something you didn’t pay attention to – you just assumed all adults came into being parent-aged, fully-formed and equipped with adulting skills, or a lack thereof.

But it’s obvious now, maybe because you know Dirk. They really are spitting images of each other. The similarities are fucking striking. Dirk always looks like garbage warmed over, and your bro has a good decade and a half on him, and it shows maybe more than it should. You think he looks way too young to look that old. And you’ve wondered if they’ll look so different when Dirk gets up to his thirties. And from there, you’ve been piecing together what it would have been like, if… things had been different.

He was young, when he found you. Nineteen, and it shouldn’t matter, but it does. And you need to know, don’t you? What he was like, before. If he’s ever been anywhere near Dirk. If he’d want to be, if he could ever be, or if the trajectories you got shot out onto are just too ingrained to change, at his age.

“How did you learn all this stuff?” you ask, almost hesitant. “Did your parents… Did you have parents?”

There’s another third-trimester silence that sets your teeth on edge before he shakes his head. “Y’ain’t got grandparents. ’Less you count. Him.” He looks up at you. “Which I wouldn’t.”

Oh.

You hadn’t considered that.

And you really don’t want to.

John, you think, had Nanna, and Jade had her grandpa, and in a way, so did Rose. And you? Thank your lucky fucking stars, you got Caliborn and whatever other fucky shit goes into a juju. That’s what you have for a grandad, if you wanted one. You very quickly decide that you aren’t that desperate.

“Idk, dude, Li’l Cal as a grandpa would be kind of fucked up, right? Like a grandpa in one of those ghost movies where he’s just spooky and says weird fucked-up shit because he’s too close to the veil or whatever. And maybe he tries to fuckin’ murder a kid, right? Fuck that guy. He should be dead.” You grimace. “I mean, he’s pretty much dead, isn’t he?”

He doesn’t say anything at first, and you feel dread build in your stomach.

“Right?”

“As good as,” he replies, finally, with a near-apathetic shrug. “Haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since I… got back. Can’t tell if it’s because he’s gone, or…” Another shrug.

“You could feel if he was there?” Your voice comes out much smaller than you expected.

He shifts in the water, then gestures back to the bank. “Should get on. We’re losin’ daylight.”

The biggest difference is that he doesn’t push you anymore. You take your goddamn time drying your feet off, and rolling your socks back on, and unlacing and relacing your shoes, and he doesn’t do so much as stare.

It’s kind of unnerving, if you’re honest. In a different way than it used to be. You’re eighteen now, and you’ve spent five years of your life without him, almost a third of it. You expected him to be the same, and he is, except in all the ways that count. And it’s not his stiffness or quietness or all the ways he’s _not_ Dirk that piss you off. It’s just like – he went somewhere, the old him, and you have no idea where the fuck he went, no idea what’s happening except that he’s not here anymore and you don’t know who this person is. You asked for your brother back and you got a shadow that doesn’t ever seem to know what the fuck to say to you when that was never a problem before.

You want him to be exactly the person he was before all this Game bullshit so you can pick a fight with him, you think, which is insane, because you’re a lot of things but you’re not a warrior. He’d destroy you in a heartbeat. It’s just that you have this intense desire to fuck him up that lives right next door to your all-consuming need to know what the hell he’s about.

“Ready?” he asks. Sounds weird, coming from his mouth.

“Sure,” you reply, and you pick your way back into the woods, feeling strange.

The falls appear very suddenly, like a smash cut, or the flash of a camera. They’re not there, and then they are, as if the game engine has finally managed to calculate the their draw distance. They’re beneath you, as the trees part, formed from a stream that splits around the jagged rocks at the top, plunging what has to be at least four stories down. The water has bishie sparkles. The trees are leafy as fuck. And Earth-C stretches out in front of you, a map that you don’t recognize.

“Shit,” you say breathlessly, and take your sunglasses off, toddling onto one of the overhanging rocks. You can see the stream meander through the trees below, dipping out of sight and re-emerging miles away in a stretch of marshy lowlands. Birds wheel below you, and in the far distance, you can see a ridge of mountains scratched over the line of the horizon.

He walks up slowly, like he thinks he couldn’t fall off if he tried, and you’re willing to bet that’s true. And he sits down next to you, long legs hanging off the rock. You consider it for a second. What the hell, you’ll sit, too. It’s a good view. You want to drink it in like a liter of Tab. You tip the last of the water into your mouth and cap your empty bottle, swishing it around in your mouth thoughtfully.

The world looks millions of years old. You’ve watched dozens of YouTube lectures on paleontology and geology, and those mountains must have taken at least that long to form. Was this place always ready for you? If you’d won at a different time, on a different planet, would SBURB have spit you out onto a dead rock with a tiny, freezing sun? Would you have had to hit rewind on the whole universe? Your eyes follow the curve of the earth (yes, you’re on a fucking sphere, you’re not going to meme _that_ hard) and you feel like you’ve gotten a good ending, but damn, it does _not_ feel that way right now.

“How’d you find this place?”

He rests his elbow on the stone. You can see that scar when his sleeve pulls up, and look away quickly. “Saw it from down there.” The bottom of the falls, you guess. “Thought it might be cool to visit.”

You’re not sure what you’re supposed to say to that. “Yeah. Pretty cool.”

And, like, as glorious as this view is, as genuinely beautiful as you think it is (you snap a picture with your phone so everyone can be jealous later, typical millennial), you find yourself thinking, _Is this it?_

Like, was this the whole point of your trip? To get to the top of some waterfall and take a look, then go home? You can’t imagine anything else to do while hiking, but you and John had a lot of fun on the road, not to mention a lot of uncomfortably sincere talks. You guess not everything has to have an emotional denouement, but your entire goddamn life has been narratively-driven at this point, so why would it switch up now? And if you _had_ to have an emotional denouement with anybody, you’d want it to be your big bad older brother.

You want to ask him a million things. The _whys_ and _hows_ and _whens_ you’ve had boiling inside you since you were small threaten to spill out.

But all you ask is, “Why’d you want to go camping?”

He hums, staring out at the scenery, lounging like a contented big cat. You kind of want to push him into the water. “Crocker thought it’d be a good idea.”

Your stomach does a weird sink-flip. So he only went to all this trouble because Jane’s fucking dad told him to? Number one, since when does he listen to _anybody_ except apparently Satan? Number two, what about _you?_ Was this not a misguided attempt to establish a connection with you in à la shitty B-movie plot?

“Oh,” you say, like an idiot. “I guess it’s chill.”

He wipes his hand over his mouth like he’s uncomfortable. “Didn’t think you’d wanna come. Don’t think you were ever an outdoors kid.”

“I didn’t really get much of a chance to be an outdoors kid,” you point out. “The most nature I got to tangle with was the crows.”

He glances up at you, then away, and asks, haltingly, “Would you’ve wanted to? Be in the scouts, or somethin’?”

You stare down at him, at the top of his cap, and wonder how far you want to go. “To be honest, dude, I would have taken literally anything that got me out of the house.”

And you hold your breath, ready to fly off into the wild and get incredibly lost incredibly fast, but he keeps the surprise train chugging and just kind of nods. “Yeah.”

So you press. “What do you mean, ‘yeah’?”

“I…” He cocks his head, still not looking at you. “I guess I get it. Now.”

The way he appends _now_ does something to your brain, like the way moving objects do something to charging bulls. “And?”

“And what?”

You scoot back from the ledge so you can get your legs under you, as if the feeling of the rock under your shoes will ground you. “Why the fuck couldn’t you see it before? Ain’t it common sense not to just – do whatever the fuck you did? To a _kid?”_ You always envisioned this confrontation involving a list you could beat him over the head with, but he already knows, you think, and that’s fine by you. “I don’t know, man, I’ve had time to sort through the bullshit. I’ve gone to whatever shitty-ass therapy sessions RoseMary panhandled me into. I’ve had a million pale pal feelings jams. I get _me._ But it seems like no matter what I do, no matter what new fuckin’ realizations I have about all the ways I’m fucked up, I can never understand _you._ Like, I get it. You had Lil Cal. I don’t know what he did, but you had him, and I’m sure there was some bullshit happenin’ there, but I don’t _get_ it.”

And he finally looks at you, still looking like he hasn’t slept in a year. Like he doesn’t get you, either. “Ain’t nothin’ to get.”

“What does that fucking mean!” You wish there were more tall rocks around so your voice could echo and return in a dozen different ways, because you feel like you need more than one voice to yell at him. “What does that _fucking_ mean? You pulled an after-school special on me for thirteen years because you could? I don’t believe that. And I don’t _want_ to. You could tell me just about any goddamn thing in the world and I’d believe you. So just—” You fling your arms up, an inch away from going to town on his head. “Anything. Say _anything_ that _means something.”_

He’s silent again, and you could scream. Your heart is hammering, you’re shaking, your hands are scuffed up from where you’ve been banging them emphatically against the rocks like an angry paleolithic lawyer pushing his point on a judge made of granite.

You don’t even know what you want him to say. You don’t think he could say anything that would make things better, that would explain endless days on the roof and your first stitches at eleven, lessons in first aid where he made you watch as he splinted his own thumb, the way he moved like lightning and expected you to keep up. And now he’s being so fucking careful with you, talking when you want him to talk, asking you if you want to do things, if you want to come camping. Carrying your camping gear. Taking you up here to see a view straight out of _The Land Before Time._

He’s pressing all the right buttons, and you’re still not satisfied, and you don’t know whether that makes you an entitled brat who doesn’t know when to stop or if he’s just an automaton after all, with nothing inside. Maybe you’re looking for a Kinder Surprise™ and about to get duped. And maybe, a little part of you thinks, that would be better than being one of those dumb fuckers who choked to death on the prize inside.

You’re not great with other people’s feelings. To say the least.

“I did it ’cause I thought I needed to,” he says, finally, and the words coming out of his mouth hit so hard it’s like getting glassjawed. You feel like you can’t see anything, even though you’re looking right at him. “’Cause that’s what I thought the Game was gonna be. And… it’s easy to make things line up that way, once you’re thinkin’ on that line. That you just need to go harder, move faster.” He lets out a long breath through his nose, looks up, beyond you. “And I don’t think, at that point, I could’ve seen another way out.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” you say, head swimming. You think you might puke all over this beautiful scenery. Typical. “Didn’t you – jesus fuck, it wasn’t _about_ you. None of this was about you.”

“That’s the problem,” he says, tired, and you – he doesn’t have the right to be tired, you want _answers._ “It was about you before I even knew who the hell you were. What you looked like.”

And you think you get that, but you hate it, that he had all these pre-formed opinions, that he didn’t give a fuck when it mattered. Left you to entertain yourself unless he could learn you somethin’. Deejaying, breaking, swordfighting, survival skills, vigilance. You could never figure out if you got the lesson right.

“Fuck you,” you mumble, forcing the sounds out through a clogged throat. You’re gonna need a snake to clear this one. Or maybe you’re just gonna cry like a bitch. You never could plug that shit up around him.

He draws his legs up, too, turns to face you, and says the dumbest shit you’ve ever heard in your life, which is saying something, because Eridan still has a functional mouth.

“You can hit me, if you want,” he says simply, and you almost do, out of frustration, because that’s not the fucking point. He always wanted you to do that and if you never do, it will be your proudest achievement. “’S okay. You got the right.”

“I don’t _want_ to,” you snap. “That’s not what I want. I don’t want revenge. I want you to be a different fucking person from the guy who just up and took a shit on my life, but you’re not, and I have no idea why you’re here, or why I’m here. I don’t know why I thought going on a camping trip was going to fix anything. We’re not a family. I don’t even know who you are.”

And, fuck, you know you have the right to say all of that, but it doesn’t feel good coming up, just like actually puking never actually feels like your body cleansing itself of some shitty toxin. It just feels like puking. And this just feels like you’re unloading because you can, because you feel like you should. Sticking spears into a bull because you’re a toreador and you’re in an arena and the crowd is cheering.

Maybe that should be enough for anybody, but it’s not enough for you, and the way you can see something shift in his face makes you want to be sick again.

“He said you wanted me back,” he says, with more uncertainty than you’ve ever heard, and it terrifies you. “If he was lying…”

“Then what?” you shoot back, miserable. “Were you gonna pop back into the bubble? Fuck off to the other side of the planet and die?”

“So you didn’t,” he says, like you confirmed his suspicions, and you want to scream.

“No, I fucking _did.”_ You bury your head in your hands. “Fuckin’ embarrassing, I guess. I thought you were gonna be different. I thought things were gonna change.”

“Some of ’em did.” Something in his voice reminds you of dust. Something dead and soft and light. “But. Not enough, I guess.”

You don’t know what to say. You don’t know what either of you could say to save this. You don’t even know if he wants to. Maybe you _are_ going to puke. You’re definitely crying, at least, and you hate that you still feel strongly enough about this piece-of-shit brother of yours that you could still cry over him and everything he could have been for you, but chose not to be.

You’re tired.

It feels like hours before he takes your water bottle and stands up, breaks the silence.

“C’mon,” he prompts you. “Let’s go back to camp. Get your sleepin’ bag set up. You don’t gotta stay up if you don’t want to.” You don’t move, at first, face in your knees like a kid, like you didn’t turn eighteen, like you haven’t been through worse. He prompts you again, with that weird carefulness, like you’re a wild animal. “Dave. C’mon.”

It’s your name that unwinds you. The name he gave you, the name you always had, the way things were supposed to be. You know his legal name is Dirk, but you’ve never heard him answer to that. It was always Mr. Strider or Strider, and you called him _bro._

You follow him back to camp, eyes on the ground, head in the sky.

Once you get back to camp, he’s already inside the tent, untying the knots on your cherry-red sleeping bag. You crawl inside without a word, pressing your face into your arms, and wait until you hear him leave to hit it, hard.

It’s dark when you wake up, but you can see through the walls of the tent that he has a fire going, and you think you can smell something cooking. Blearily, you check your phone, shoot off a couple of texts to say you’re fine, everything’s fine, it’s fine. You must have slept about four hours. Obviously, you feel like shit, but you can’t muster up the energy to leave the tent, and you don’t want to see him, because what’s the point.

What was the point of any of this? He didn’t even want to be here.

But you need to piss, and you need a drink, and you want a hot dog, so you unzip the door and stumble around the tent to relieve yourself, then shuffle over to the campfire and sit down on the other end of the log he has pulled up, water bottle in hand.

Wordlessly, he spears a hot dog from the fire and puts it in a bun, hands it to you. You take it without thanking him and shove it into your face. Holy fuck, you’re hungry. Maybe a couple of doggos will give you enough energy to feel embarrassed about your freakout at the waterfall.

“Sleep good?” he asks. He’s wearing a jacket now, sleeves shoved up to the elbows, because it’s a little colder, despite he fire. A blue windbreaker. Looks too big on him. You wonder why he alchemized it that way.

“No,” you mutter around your third hot dog. “’S fine, though.”

“Want ketchup?”

“Nah. M’fine.”

“A’ight,” he says, and doesn’t push it. Doesn’t even look at you once you finish eating and hunch over on the log, staring at the fire. Just keeps eating. You don’t know how many hot dogs he packed.

You’re still tired. You don’t feel like yelling. You also still want to puke a little bit, but mostly you feel sad. Like you just watched someone die. Actually, it kind of feels like getting zapped back to life. You don’t ever remember that happening to you, because of John’s magical plot hole powers, but it kind of feels like that, a weird body-and-soul hangover.

“Did you used to camp a lot?” Your voice comes out like a croak.

“No.” The answer comes easily. He wipes his fingers on his pants. “Don’t think you could’ve called it camping.”

You shift your cheek against your knees, feeling your cheekbone bump up against your kneecap. “Then what was it?”

“Survival trainin’.” He picks up the package of buns, twists the plastic, ties it off, throws it back in the bag. “Maybe just starvin’. Hard to say, now.”

“Why’s that?”

He sighs, folds his arms loosely. The jacket crinkles. You can hear the coarse fabric make that shining sound as it rubs against itself. “It was easy to think of it like an adventure. No one around for miles, do the best you can. I remember thinkin’ that, but I don’t remember much of what I did. Just that I was hungry.”

“It sucks.”

He doesn’t take offense to your implication. You don’t think your brain would be together enough to deal with it if he did. “Yeah.”

With some mounting dread, you realize that he’s being open with you because he thinks you want him gone, so none of this matters.

Why did it take _this_ to make him finally fucking treat you like an equal? Or even like his real kid brother?

“Why’d you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Training. Like, was it self-teaching?”

He shakes his head, almost laughs. “Nah. Had a trainer. Told him I wanted a challenge, and he dropped me in the middle of bumfuck nowhere to prove a point, I guess.”

You don’t know how to describe how you feel when you hear that. It’s like leaning against the window and watching the sun set, maybe. That’s as close as you can get. “And he just did it?”

“It was what he was there for.” He pops his knuckles, one hand, then the other. “Doesn’t matter, anyway. Didn’t realize there was anything else to do out there besides smoke up.”

You laugh, despite yourself, even though it’s just a puff of laughter (haha puff lel). “Did you do that a lot?”

There’s half a smile on his face. It doesn’t look like it belongs there. “Maybe.” And then it falls away. You see the guy you know.

“Dirk said you did hella drugs.”

“Bet he said a lotta things.”

“Did you ever do acid?”

“Dave.”

“What about heroin?” You _need_ to know.

“Dave,” he sighs, because you’re being an annoying little shit, trying to get things to be kind of the same again, since that’s your dumb younger brother job. “Will you stop askin’ if I tell you it was mostly party drugs?”

“Why? I’m not gonna _judge_ you for smoking _marijuana.”_ You do your best SBaHJ porkchop mouth.

He hums, stares into the fire, and you think you can see him dissociating or some shit.

“Least I waited ’til I was eighteen.”

“The year before you got me?”

He nods. “Did a lot of dumb shit, before. And after. Guess it was just the waitin’ around that really fucked with everything.”

“Did you always know?” Your voice comes out a lot smaller than you wanted it to be. “That you were gonna get me?”

“Down to the minute.” He props his chin up on one hand. “Spent almost a decade gettin’ ready. But here we are, anyway.”

“Yup.” A log cracks in the fire pit.

He takes a breath, then asks you a question. “You happy livin’ with everyone at the house?”

You blink hard, and consider it. “I guess. I mean, I think I am? It’s fun, but we’re all… like, you have to die to get to god tier. We’re kind of messed up. I don’t know if any of us are ever really gonna be happy.”

“But you’re good with them,” he clarifies. “You’ll be all right with ’em.”

Fuck, didn’t you say you still wanted him around? “Why do you make it sound like I need to start planning your funeral once we get back?”

A shrug. “Just checkin’.”

“Bullshit.”

“Look,” he says, in a way that’s so Dirk-like it’s kind of painful. “I know you said you wanted me around. But you don’t have to want that. You should just. Do you. That was the whole point of winnin’ the Game. Right?”

“Was there a point?” You’re fully folded in half, arms dangling down near your shoes. You’re playing with the laces. “Because it feels like it was a bunch of shit that didn’t need to happen, that sucked and was bad and killed some of my friends and gave the rest of them PTSD. Like, that’s the other thing. You knew there was gonna be fighting. Didn’t that ever bother you? On a fundamental level?”

“He told me to keep my eyes on the prize,” he says, and that chills you, despite the fact that your toes are basically in the firepit.

The fucking puppet.

“Lil Cal?”

He nods, hesitant. “Made a lot of suggestions. My own Clippy.” The joke falls on its goddamn face. Lame. Your brother is so fucking lame.

You make a face. “Was he your, like, personal assistant?”

“Nah. Nothing like that. More like…” And he trails off and doesn’t finish. You wait, but he doesn’t pick it back up.

“More like what?”

“You said,” he starts, and then stops again, and you stare at him, just so fucking confused.

“The fuck did I say?” you demand. How is it _your_ fault again? Goddamn.

He turns to the fire. It takes him a minute. You’re finally seeing it for what it is. Him holding back.

“You said it’d be fucked up if you had ’im as a grandfather,” he says, absently, like he’s not paying attention, but you think it’s because he can’t lean into it or he’ll flip his shit. “Was tryna think if it’d be fucked up to have ’im as a dad, or. I dunno.” He coughs, waves his hand to clear the smoke. “Never mind.”

“Yeah, dude, it would be super mega fucked up,” you say immediately. You literally can’t believe this is it. This is the shit he’s fucked up about, so hard that he can’t even recognize normal when you’re slapping him round about the face with it. “And I’m basically the king of super mega fucked up, so take it from me.”

The way he looks at you when you say that is terrifying, not because you’re afraid for yourself, but because when you see his face twist up like that you feel as if you’re watching someone get decapitated and then looking down at your hands to see the sword that did it. He bends over where he’s sitting, like a tree cracking at the base, head falling into his hands so you can’t see his expression.

For a few long, horrible minutes, the crackling of the fire is the only sound, and you think wildly that if this kind of power is what getting god-tiered gets you, then you don’t know if you want it.

You clamp your hands together and clear your throat and say, quietly, “Bro?”

He doesn’t say anything.

You prompt him again. Try to be gentle. “Bro, you’re kind of freaking me out.”

“Yeah,” he says, and his voice comes to you in pieces, like a plate shattered on the floor. “I just.” He takes a sharp breath. “You know I didn’t want you to die, right?”

The question just blindsides you. Totally just Sandra Bullocks the shit out of you. “I—”

“I didn’t want you dead. I might’ve done a lot of shit that’s not – that you can’t forgive or forget, but I didn’t ever want to watch you get torn up.”

This is just confusing. You want to say, _Yeah, well, too late,_ but you get the feeling this isn’t about that. “But you didn’t.”

“I did,” he says with an edge of finality. “I did, and then I died, and I had no way of knowin’ if you managed to get out. I fucked that shit up hard.”

You bite your lip, rub at your eyes, watch the image of the fire burned into your retinas spread and duplicate. You’re not gonna help by saying that, yes, he did, but what else _can_ you say? It’s all so obvious and yet it being obvious does nothing for either of you. You’re starting to think that this is an unfixable situation.

“I didn’t want you to die, either,” you say instead. “Like, man, I didn’t know how to feel for a while. Sometimes – I was happy. But most of the time I was just confused.” You plant your chin on your fists, bounce your heels against the ground, press the toes of your shoes into the dirt. “I didn’t get it. That you died and I was supposed to be okay about it. It felt like you didn’t care, as long as you got your hero’s death.” You shrug. “Didn’t care about me, or anything. You were just some kind of robot, and I couldn’t make you give a shit about who I was or how I felt.”

In the lull, you add, “Did you even want a kid?”

“Dunno.” He wipes his hands down over his face, blinks hard, looks up at the sky. “I knew you’d be around since _I_ was a kid. So. I don’t think I ever had an opinion. It was like a fact of life, that I was gonna get you, that I had to raise you. Either I was good with that, or the universe…” Shrug. “Y’know. ’S what I thought.”

You don’t like the idea of being a universal constant. Something that people just have to deal with because paradox space put you there with them, and now you all just have to tough it out, _Shawshank Redemption_ your way through Dave’s bullshit. You want to be a choice that someone is happy to make.

But you think you can see it now, how your meteor doomed him. How, in a very _Final Fantasy_ way, your presence hovered over his life like a cloud. How, like Dirk, he grew up in your shadow, trying to live up to your legacy, or at least the one you’d have someday.

It’s striking how unfair that is. To him, to you, to the remixed Dirk and Dave. That the two of you were always destined to land in Houston, linked to each other by location and fate and whatever the fuck Lil Cal was. That your choices had to affect each other.

“So he told you?”

“’Bout you? Yeah.”

“And the Game?”

“Yeah,” he sighs, rubbing his hands together. “Just some stuff. Didn’t know how your session would pan out until it started going bad.”

Then you ask the question that’s been dancing at the tip of your tongue like Ginger Rogers, filter be damned. “Did he tell you that you were going to die?”

“That’s kind of a,” he starts, but you put on your best shitty Lalonde glare.

“If you say ‘personal question’ I’m going to piss on this fire and fly home without you. You owe me so much more than a fuckin’ explanation.”

He puts his hands up. “Was gonna say ‘complicated.’ It was one of those things he never had to say with words. I kind of understood it was gonna happen like that. It had to.” The half-smile he gives you looks completely unnatural. “Makes for good primetime drama.”

“But I didn’t even see it.”

“You did.” He looks at you again, searching. “That wasn’t you?”

You’re not sure how to explain the entire Davesprite thing to him. “I mean, it was me. Just not _me._ I dunno, it’s complicated. Time travel bullshit. That’s what happens when you fuck with the timeline.”

“And he didn’t make it.”

Jesus fucking christ. It’s been so long since Jack Noir _existed_ that you completely forgot about that catastrophic sequence of shenanigans. “Uh, kinda? Like, he’s not _here,_ and he’s – a they, now? Because he – sprites can fuse with other sprites to become squared sprites, and Davepeta decided – her name was Nepeta, so when they fused they became Davepeta, and also a they. But they didn’t leave the session. Or they haven’t yet. We don’t really know. There should be another round of drops soon, but we don’t know exactly…”

Your brother seems to take this all in, mulling it over for a moment, and then he reaches into the bag on his far side and pulls out s’mores materials. You’re not sure if this is supposed to distract you, or pacify you, or what, but it’s fuckin’ s’mores, baby, you can conduct this train of interrogative fuckwittery while chowing down on some chewy, crunchy sweetness. You can multitask like a grown ass adult.

“I knew there was more than one of you running around,” he says while you’re prying open the box of graham crackers, the roasting stick resting across your lap. “I thought he – I thought they’d make it. After.”

“After you died?”

“Mm.” He reaches into his pocket, takes out a penknife to open the bag of marshmallows. You frown.

“You thought I was the other Dave.” You stare at the graham cracker package, the brownish plastic wrappers sealed around each stack.

“It’s – better. That’s it’s you. Maybe. That you didn’t have to see shit. I thought it might be good for you, back then, but. I dunno. Things look different from here.”

Yeah, probably. You don’t know what the psychological effect of watching him get impaled on his own sword by a demonic winged chess piece would have been. Maybe you can ask Davepeta if/when they get back. Or maybe you should, like, never talk about that ever, at all, because no.

“What kind of things?”

You can’t tell what kind of expression shapes his face next.

“A lot of ’em,” he sighs.

You toast your marshmallows in silence, and you build your s’more with a bar of chocolate on either side, because fuck rationing, _John,_ you have an alchemiter. Jade always gives you her piece, anyway. You’re not actually sure if she can eat it anymore. Or grapes. Yikes.

After two s’mores, you decide to grab your hoodie from the tent. Hells yes, it shields you from the cold. +1 elemental armor. You’re invulnerable to ice now. And, because you’re tired and he just looks different, alone on the log with the shadows of the forest shifting around him, you sit next to your brother, almost close enough to touch.

He doesn’t seem to know what to do about it at first, but then he relaxes, inch by inch. He makes you another s’more. Two pieces of chocolate. He was watching.

You tear up, because you’re mad and sad and glad and wondering why he chose _now,_ why he couldn’t have done this before, given you just one fucking break where both of you could just be people who cared about each other, instead of patching up in the bathroom after yet another strife. Why, even if he had Lil Cal in his brain, he couldn’t have broken out of his hold, recognized how fucked-up he made your whole life, seen the signs. That’s what people do in all the movies and TV shows you’ve watched. If this was an anime, he would have shown you, somehow, in a way you could understand, that he loved you.

You finish eating and swallow around the lump in your throat, then drop against his arm. You wouldn’t have reached his shoulder when you were thirteen.

Slowly, cautiously, like he’s unsure of what to do, he raises his arm and rests it around your shoulders, pulling you in closer, so your head fits under his. It’s convenient, that you’re facing forward this time, so he can’t see your undoubtedly red and watery eyes and your gross clogged nose. His jawbone is a hard line against the top of your head.

Fuck. Why are you always like this. You sniff and wrap your arms around your waist.

“I wish I could say it was all because of him,” he says, and your breath hitches, because you kind of know what’s coming. “I wish I could say I didn’t have a choice. But I had a lot of choices. I just didn’t want to see it.”

“Why not?” You wipe your nose on your sleeve. God, you sound like a frog. “Didn’t you, like – that’s a Hallmark crime, man. Beating up a kid.”

You can feel his chest rise as he takes a deep breath. “That would’ve meant sayin’ a mess of things that I didn’t know how to say. I spent a long time trainin’ up to be the best. Would’ve sucked to know that all I got was a new way to fuck up. I didn’t want to think I fucked up with you.”

“But you did.” You pull at the fingers of his hand, dangling over your shoulder. He has a thick scar that goes up across his palm. You match.

“But I did,” he repeats. “And that’s why – I guess I don’t get it. Why you wanted me here in the first place. Nothin’ good I did could have balanced out the rest of it. I mean, I never understood in the first place. How you were still – attached.”

“Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t… it wasn’t all bad. I was hoping you were somebody else, and I could just have the good parts. I guess that ain’t fair.”

“I been tryin’.” There’s a tired humor in his voice that you don’t like. Something in it sounds like the worst parts of Dirk. “But I dunno. Leopard’s spots, ’n’ everything.”

“I dunno.” You butt your head under his chin and close your eyes for a moment. “Make me another s’more and I’ll give you my verdict. Judge Strider presiding.”

“’Fraid I can’t do that with just one hand.”

“Damn. Guess you’re just going to have to try to not be a dick.”

He says, “I don’t think I know where to start with that.”

You say, “You could start by saying you’re sorry. I dunno.”

The fire burns low. You can see the ember in each charred stick pulse with a red glow, white ash flaking off of a black crust and settling in your clothes, same as the savory smell of woodsmoke. Your eyelids track downwards until you’re in a light doze, and you’re so motherfuckin’ cozy that you don’t realize it until your bro shifts on the log.

“Muh?” you say intelligently.

“We should get to sleep.”

You groan. “Thought you didn’t sleep.”

“Everybody sleeps. Just like everybody poops.”

“You don’t know if the trolls poop. Xenophobe.”

“Shut up,” he says, but there’s nothing behind it. You don’t feel scolded, and it’s – nice.

He doesn’t detach immediately, like he’s reluctant to get up, and you can’t imagine why, but _you’re_ comfy, so you don’t question it too much. You’ve raised so much shit on one trip. You deserve five more minutes of unquestioned comfiness.

You’re barely conscious enough to notice that he’s running his thumb over your knuckles, over the scars there that are so familiar to you, that have been there so long you don’t think you know what they looked like before. But you do, and then you go still, because what if he notices. What if he stops. You don’t know how to feel.

He notices you stiffen up, of course he does, but he doesn’t comment. Softly, into your hair, almost too quiet for you to hear, he says, “’m sorry.”

And it’s not enough forever, but it’s enough for now.

You pack up swiftly in the morning after reviving the fire just enough to cook breakfast. Then you attempt to murder it.

“How do we put this goddamn thing out?” you whine, pouring the rest of your bottle of water uselessly over the flames. All it does is produce more smoke and not make the fire stop from being hot. He just cocks an eyebrow at you. “Dude, I was making empty threats. I’m not gonna whip my dick out for _this_ shit.”

With a stick, he shows you how to rearrange the logs, use wet dirt to smother the embers. He looks goofy with his unkempt hair flopping all over the place.

It’s a new look on him. You kind of hope he keeps it. Dirk’s already uptight enough about his hair. You’d appreciate the extra mirror time. And yes, you can hear Jade rolling her eyes from miles away.

The two of you trek down to the base of the hill – that’s what he calls it, a hill, even though you, a Texan through and through, would have called it a mountain – and meander over the grass a bit before you arrive at the car and sling your bags into the back seat. You weren’t going to fly him and all your shit for a million miles, no sir. You don’t have arm strength like that.

It’s familiar. This, being in the passenger seat, even if it’s a different car, in a different world, with someone who could one day be a person you wouldn’t recognize. The hum of the engine, the roll of the steering wheel, your bro with one elbow out the driver’s side window. The sky is blue as hell. You can hardly believe you’re going home.

You pass the nearest carapacian village after a few miles, and everyone waves at you. You’re ninety percent sure your bro rolls his eyes at that. You wave back, grinning, spine cracking from a night on the ground. And sure, you look like shit, but when you breathe in the air rushing past, you feel lighter.

“Don’t stick your head out the car,” he warns half-heartedly. “The fuck am I gonna say to Crocker if you knock your fuckin’ block off.”

“I’m a god-tier. Worst case scenario, you just stop the car and go find it so Jane can stick it back on. I’ll be fine.”

He sighs. “That’s fucked, Dave.”

“You’re the one who asked for instructions.”

The miles pass beneath your wheels and the sun inches up behind you. You wonder how much time he’s spent out here, while you weren’t looking, when nobody cared. How he came across that spot on the waterfall, if he sat on that rock, if he’d been planning to say something. If, like Dirk, he’s the kind of guy to think his words to death, to steal them out of his own mouth.

Someday, you want to find them. To get the whole story, if he’ll tell you. And maybe you’ll tell him yours, too.

But that’s a long ways away, and you’re approaching the turn in the road that leads to the house. Three miles to home. Above you, soon, you see John and Jake and Jane and Jade engaging in some kind of Harlishcrockerbert family rigmarole, and they wave at you before racing back to (presumably) tell the others.

Oh god. You hope they don’t make a big deal out of it. You slouch down in your seat.

He tilts his head towards you, quirks an eyebrow. “What, am I embarrassin’ you?”

“Shut up, bro,” you mumble. “Badass god-tiers don’t get embarrassed.”

“Sure.”

“Don’t make fun of my post-pubescent metaphor, dickhead.”

“I’m not,” he says, in the way that means he totally is. You hide your stupid grin in the neck of your hoodie.

When you breathe in, you can still smell the woodsmoke.

**Author's Note:**

> [the theme song(?)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL6E2ahvyKg)
> 
> thanks for reading! happy new year!


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